Fulbright Taiwan mid-year Conference

The conference took place in Xitou, Nantou 南投溪頭, from January 16 to 18. Not including myself, 8 senior researchers (professors or lecturers), 11 junior researchers (post-college and master's, or current doctoral researchers), and 28 English teaching assistants ETA (16 in Yilan, and 12 in Kaohsiung) were present to present their current teaching or research in Taiwan. The ETAs were inspirational- their creativity and passion for teaching English was phenomenal. The senior and junior researchers had interesting topics from different disciplines, including film, art, history, religious studies, medicine, and river science.

We visited the Sun Moon Lake 日月潭 on January 16, before heading to Xitou. The mornings on January 17 and January 18 were free time for us to explore the beautiful trails in Xitou. On January 17, I hiked up to the highest point in the area, the Observatory in Mt. Pheonix, at 1800 meters latitude. It was where I could see the main part of Yu-shan, the highest mountain in Taiwan, the Sun Moon Lake, and two other mountain ranges, Hsue-shan and Hohuan-shan. I hiked up approximately 700-800 meters in altitude in two hours. My calves are still too sore for moving two-three days after the hike. On January 18, I hiked to see the Giant Tree and Sky Walk in the morning. We got back to Taipei after 6pm.

Taiwan's 2012 Presidential Election

The election ended a week ago with the re-election of the incumbent president, Ma Ying-jeou. It was an emotional and enthusiastic campaign for the opposition party because the Taiwanese people were and still are unhappy with the administration. The final vote count was larger than expected (797,561 votes; 51.6% vs. 45.6%). The media and all parties had expected the result to be much closer in this tightly contested election. Nevertheless, the incumbent had lost over half of the popular vote that elected him to his first term. He received 58.45% of votes, and the other candidate received 41.55% of votes, Ma won by over 2 million votes four years ago. The economy slowed during his term, as global recession affected Taiwanese economy. Below are the issues that became central to the election:

- China-Taiwan relations (cross-strait relations)
- Growing income gap between the rich and the poor (although some economic statics showed Taiwan's economy growing)
- Low employment rates of (college-graduate) young people
- Rising cost of living
- Monthly stipend for (old) retired farmers

Most television talk show speakers (reporters) and non-Taiwanese media agree that the China-Taiwan relations determined the outcome of the election. My observations and conversation with relatives and friends in Taiwan reveal a more complex picture. I do not think most of the people who voted for Ma Ying-jeou favored a closer China-Taiwan relations. I think most of them either 1) still associate the opposing party, Democratic Progressive Party, as a party of corruption with the influence of the previous president Chen Shui-bian (there are many problematic points with this association and assumption), or 2) have an almost-perfect view of President Ma because the media, of which over 80% supported his party, packaged him as a nice, thrifty, handsome man with a thrifty and strict wife.

Factors that affected the outcome of the election:
- Massive negative campaigns attacking the character of the other candidate, Tsai Ing-wen, and the character of her party, Democratic Progressive Party, by the incumbent office and the ruling party

- Massive advertisements of "good policies" from various departments (such as agriculture, fishery, health, and retirement) from the Executive Yuan office 行政院

- The Chinese government used economic (political) means to influence Taiwan's presidential election this time, more strongly and visible than before. It reduced airfare for Taiwanese businesspeople and their Taiwanese employees to fly back to Taiwan for the election. The Chinese government also pressured many major Taiwanese businesspeople with investments and factories in China to publicly support President Ma's close economic (and political?) ties with China, the so-called "1992 Consensus." This "consensus" was supposed formed in 1992, which China stated that both sides agree that there is one China 各表一中, but Taiwan suggested that there are different China's 一中各表. Many Taiwanese businesspeople publicly supported the "1992 consensus" in the week leading up to the election.

- Douglas H. Paal, former director (2002-2006) of American Institute of Taiwan (AIT, the de-factor American embassy in Taiwan), publicly said that Ma Ying-jeou the incumbent president is the preferred candidate of the American government. His statement was inappropriate because his statement became the unofficial official stance of the U.S. government. No one, including the U.S. government (and the Chinese government), should interfere in the democratic election of another state.

These factors resulted in the re-election of the incumbent president, even though more than half of the population were and still are unsatisfied with his first term.

This election served as a lesson for the incumbent administration and the ruling party to get their acts together to begin working on policies that would benefit the majority of the people, middle and lower class people, college graduates, the old and the poor, and those living outside of Taipei the capital city. President Ma's party controlled over 75% of the Legislative Yuan branch in the last four years. This election reduced its seats to 61%. The opposing party, although in defeat, had gained the momentum during this election through its presidential candidate, Tsai Ing-wen, in gaining the support of youth people and some support her party lost in 2008. Even though ideology still influenced this election, I saw a trend of more people began to pay attention to "real life" issues.

"Hand in Hand": A documentary film 牽阮的手

Institute of Taiwan History at Academia Sinica showed the documentary, "Hand in Hand", from 2pm to 4:30pm yesterday, January 9, 2012. The documentary began with the love story of the Tien couple, Tien Meng-shu 田孟淑 the wife and Tien Chao-ming 田朝明 the husband, and moved onto key moments in Taiwan's democratic movement from the 1950s to the 1990s. Even though their age difference was more than 16 years, they love each other deeply and supported each other throughout the decades. Their age difference did not receive the blessing of the wife's family, and resulted in elopement. The wife has an easy-going personality with a great sense of humor. Through her eyes and her narration, we learn about their love story and their experiences of struggling against the authoritarian Chinese Nationalist (KMT) government. This film has English subtitles. I highly recommend this movie if you are interested in understanding Taiwan's post-World War II history and its democratization process, as well as the multiculturalism of Taiwan, as seen through the multiple languages that the wife speaks (Taiwanese hoklo, Chinese Mandarin, Japanese, and English).

My tears ran almost non-stopped, from the beginning to the end of the film. Their love story and their fight for a free and independent Taiwan touched my heart.

Official blog of the film: http://hands2011.pixnet.net/blog/post/8080241
Review:

The Joy of Life: Alcohol and Fat

This past Sunday, January 8, was December 15 on the lunar calendar. My yoga teacher in Taiwan invited both of her two classes to visit her house in the mountains/wilderness. A classmate, the de-facto class president, organized the event and bought necessary ingredients for our feast.

The yoga teacher's husband cooked a big pot of (two) chicken with ginger, sesame oil, and strong rice wine 麻油雞 (rice wine at 40-50% alcohol), without diluting the pot with any water. Thin noodles were eaten in this soup. We also enjoyed hot pot 火鍋, with 4 to 5 different home-grown vegetables from the yoga teacher's land, and some store-bought fish-paste 魚漿 goods 火鍋料.

The yoga teacher made each person koah-pau 刈包 (some call this "Taiwanese hamburger") after the yoga class yesterday, Jan. 9. It was so good to have it after an intense yoga session. Koah-pau is a traditional snack in Taiwan. Koah-pau is eaten by (apparently) Taipei residents on 尾牙, December 16 on the lunar calendar, while Southern Taiwanese eat lun-pia^N 潤餅 on this day. Ingredients for both snacks have commonality: flavored pork, cilantro, peanut powder. Koah-pau is consisted of a semi-circular shape white bun split in the middle. Soy sauce-boiled pork, cilantro, preserved green mustard, cilantro, and peanut powder are stuffed inside.

KFC Chicken on (Gregorian calendar) New Year's Eve in Taiwan

Almost every major city in Taiwan had a New Year's eve celebration last night, including Taipei, Kaohsiung, Tainan, Taichung, Chiayi, and Taoyuan. Each celebration involved a list of celebrities performing songs and/or dances on stage.

While this is not as widespread as it might be, some Taiwanese people have the "tradition" of having KFC chicken on New Year's Eve. The lines at the KFC we went to were long, and many people got buckets of chicken to go. I was told that Taiwanese people like eating chicken. Since KFC chicken taste good, and some Taiwanese people feel like having chicken on New Year's Eve, KFC becomes their top choice.

This taste for KFC reminds me of KFC for Christmas in Japan. As a widespread cultural practice, Japanese people love having KFC for Christmas. Starting one month before Christmas, KFC begins take orders for Christmas. I heard that late orders will result in no KFC chicken on Christmas eve/day. Was this the result of KFC marketing, or something that started from the Japanese people themselves?

Christmas in Taiwan

Christmas trees were visible everywhere, and Christmas lights also appeared in many places in Taipei. Christmas has become a "bigger event" in Taiwan than when I was a little girl in Taiwan. Still, I am not sure what Taiwanese people make of Christmas, what does it mean to them?

The most interesting tree was in National Taiwan Normal University 國立師範大學 (see the picture above, on the left, took in December 2011, Taipei). It looked like a Christmas tree, but with a touch of Japanese culture. What decorated the tree was papers with people's w ishes for the New Year. The hanging of wishes is what Japanese people do on Tanabata Festival 七夕祭り. Tanabata celebrates the annual meeting on July 7 of two lovers who are separated in the rest of the year, according to the Chinese legend (For more, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanabata). The Japanese people used to celebrate it on July 7 on the lunar calendar before the Meiji period (1868-1912), but they now celebrate it on July 7 on the Gregorian calendar. They would write their wishes for the year, and hang them on bamboo or other trees (see the picture above, on the right, took in July 2009, Osaka). Looking at how the Christmas tree was full of wishes hanging on it, I think it shows how Taiwanese people combine different elements from various cultures and traditions to make something new in Taiwan. This Christmas tree, a (European) Christian practice, with Japanese Tanabata practice of hanging wishes on the tree, in a major university in Taiwan to celebrate Christmas a Christian holiday gives Christmas a different meaning.

Research presentations in Taiwan

I finished one presentation, and have two more presentations to do in Taiwan before my big presentation at the annual conference for Association for Asian Studies (AAS) in Toronto, Canada, in mid-March 2012.

This past Tuesday, I gave a presentation (in Chinese for the first time in my life) at the seminar on "Modern Education in Taiwan (Japanese colonial period, 1895-1945)" that I am auditing in National Taiwan Normal University 師範大學. I read a memoir in Japanese by a Taiwanese woman, Wu Yue-e 吳月娥 born in 1921. The presentation topic was to discuss the educational experience of a Taiwanese person who received education during the Japanese colonial period. It was not easy to locate a woman's memoir, as more men received education than women. Because highly educated people are more likely to write memoirs or have their stories written down in the form of oral history or biography, it was even harder to find women's memoirs and oral histories because more men are highly educated than women. I chose to present on a woman's memoir because it is relevant to my research topic. Also, I saw how a woman's memoir addresses different issues from that of men's. For example, Wu Yue-e discussed her limited relationship with men, and criticized love suicide and premarital sex in contemporary society. She also had a lengthy discussion of the prominent problem of child-brides (童養媳, 養女) in "traditional" Taiwan by narrating the case of her younger sister and her future sister-in-law.

I have a do a research-in-progress report for the seminar I am auditing on January 3. The professor notified the whole class (including me) on Tuesday that she has allocated two hours of class time for me- I am assuming one hour of talk, and one hour of Q&A. I am getting nervous... I also have to do a presentation for the Fulbright office in Taiwan: 10-minute talk, and 5-minute Q&A. It will take place during a three-day conference at Xitou 溪頭 in Nantou county 南投 right after the presidential election in Taiwan (January 14) from January 16 to 18. I am getting excited to meet other Fulbrighters because I haven't met any! I know most of them are Fulbright IIE fellows (including student researchers and English teachers), and I am the only one of my kind in Taiwan this year.

I need to work on a draft of my AAS conference paper after these presentations. The AAS conference attendees do not expect a progress report, but a paper with clear argument and structure of my research for an academic audience.